the distinction between the congress and the administration and all that, they see someone who is an instrument of the american government on a witch-hunt against muslims. now how do you think that impacts the way people think and feel about this country in other parts of the world if that's the kind of person that is out there representing us on something called the intelligence committee? >> well, i just don't know how anybody could come to the conclusion that the country is a lot safer with michele bachmann having access to intel information. >> that's right. >> and will there be enough public support that could change her, that could remove her from the intel committee? >> probably not. i think boehner is so weakened, i don't think he would have the courage to do something like that, because i think we can't risk angering the far right wing. and there should be, ed. because as you point out, again, this is a woman who has already proven she can't be trusted with sensitive information, that she has no problem using it for her own political purposes, and she has no problem just talking off the cuff and saying all kinds of crazy things. >> karen finney, always a

pleasure to have you "the ed show." that is "the ed show." i'm ed schultz. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening. >> good evening. thanks to you at home for staying with us this hour. in politics, the concept of low hanging fruit is something that ought to be politically attainable, even if nothing else can be done, right? something that we probably all can agree on, even if we agree on nothing else about some particular policy. so on what is supposedly the most intractable political issue of our time on the issue of guns in america, the lowest of the low-hanging fruit has probably been this. it's not even a law, it's a thing. buybacks, gun buybacks, sponsored by local law enforcement officials, maybe a local church group. gun buybacks are a simple idea. if you have a gun you don't want, a buyback program gives you a chance to get rid of it in a way that is safe and orderly and legal and calm. that gun in your life that you

have not known what to do with, that you have been worried about, your friendly local buyback program gives you way to put your mind at ease. get that unwanted gun out of your house. you hand over the gun. usually in exchange you get a smallish amount of cash or a gift card. but the larger attraction here really is that the gun gets taken off your hands and safely destroyed. in political terms, buybacks are attractive because they're not a new law. they're not a new regulation. there is no coercion involved. they're not really even an attempt at persuasion. they're just offering people a resource to rid themselves of guns they don't want without risk in a safe, orderly way. it's a totally voluntary thing. since the mass shooting in newtown, connecticut, a month ago, buyback programs in cities like camden, new jersey, and los angeles have broken records. no questions asked, all of these guns are just taken off the streets. yesterday in tucson, arizona, on the second anniversary of the anniversary of the mass shooting there that nearly killed gabby

giffords and did kill six other people, the city organized a gun buyback. hundreds of people lined up in tucson. people lined up with their guns to take part in this program. using private funds from private donors, the buyback yesterday let people in tucson turn in their unwanted guns. in return, they would get a $50 gift card for groceries. so they got money for groceries. law enforcement got those guns off of people's hands. they plan to safely destroy them, taking them out of commission, taking them out of circulation. this event, again, was organized by a republican member of the local city council. now, no matter how contested the overall issue of guns and gun policy is in this country, this is the definition of low-hanging fruit, right? totally voluntary thing. i mean who could be opposed to this? the nra is opposed to this. the nra is wildly opposed to this. in tucson top, anniversary of the massacre there, the nra has

come outraging against the tucson gun buyback program. they're trying to stop it. an nra board member is threatening that the nra will sue to stop tucson from destroying the guns that they handed over. the guns, regardless what their owners wanted, done with them, those guns must be sold to the highest bidder and put back into circulation. the nra says the state must not destroy the weapons that people handed over specifically so the weapons could be destroyed. instead, the nra says the state has to sell them, keep them in circulation, and thereby become a gun dealer itself. when your response to the political cliche of low-hanging fruit is something so cartoonishly insensitive, so cartoonishly villainous, you then bring upon us a second political cliche. you have jumped the shark. blocking voluntary efforts by people to get rid of their own guns because they want to

voluntarily? that is an exercise in shark jumping. this is the sort of thing that might make sense internally to the nra when they talk about this amongst themselves, but the rest of the country are not picking a fight, but looking for problem solving, nonconfrontational ways to help each other out. trying to block the voluntary tucson gun buyback program does not make sense. the whole reason gun policy is supposed to be seen as so intractable, so unreformable, so politically untouchable and not in america is that the national rifle association has created a mystique about themselves, a mystique about their own power that is supposed to caution anyone who might want to reform gun laws that it just cannot be done. no matter who we are, no matter where we live, no matter how or why we might want to reform our gun laws, no matter what happens in our country to make us think about these things, yes supposed

to be so intimidated by the raw power of the nra, that we cannot even take a first step toward reform. we cannot even really seriously talk about reform, let alone ever expect anything to pass. the nra expects us to be enthralled by that mystique. the beltway press is enthralled by that mystique. but apparently speaking, that mystique is kind of hard to justify. you know how the sunlight foundation added up political spending in this past election to see who got the most bang for their buck in their political spending? it was really bad on the right. the republican party's house campaign committee spent almost $65 million, but only 32% of what they spent went to campaigns in which their candidate was successful. so two-to-one, their money was spent on losing. it was worse for the republican party's senate campaign. for their investment of $32 million, only 24% paid off in terms of races that went the way they wanted to. three to one, their money was spent losing. freedomworks was about the same. and the chamber of commerce, which is supposed to be such an

impressible and unassailable campaign juggernaut, the chamber of commerce spent $32 million, but less than 7% of what they spent went to winning candidates they wanted to win, or against losing candidates that they wanted to lose. less than 7%. they were 93% ineffective in what they spent. even worse than that was karl rove's american crossroads, which was like the conservative politics marquee humiliation this year. under karl rove's visionary svengali leadership, crossroad's spending was profoundly ineffective this year. they spent over $100 million in the last election, and zero of the candidates they wanted to win actually won. zero. of all the candidates they spent money against, candidates who they wanted to defeat, only two of those candidates nationwide actually did lose, which means that karl rove's group

crossroads had a less than 2% success rate in their spending. more than 98% of the money that they spent did not work. it's not very intimidating, right? think about it. if past is prologue, then in planning for the next election, if you're a political candidate, you would be very well off hoping for a karl rove spending campaign against you. it would do wonders for your odds, because 98% of the money he spent in the last election went the way he didn't want it to go, was wasted. but even karl rove's massively ineffectual spending on the last campaign looks positively impressive, positively robust compared to the right wing group that did worst of all. you think these other groups sucked? check out the nra. the nra's power in the last election, as measured by whether their spending resulted in the desired outcome barely registers on this graph. that's why we had to put the big black arrow there so you can see it. 0.83% that they spent actually resulted in the nra's preferred outcome. less than 1% of their money went to support candidates who won or

oppose candidates who lost. more than 99% of what they spent was wasted. their candidates lost. their targeted enemies won. that is demonstrable, empirical impotence. but remember, we're supposed to be very intimidated by the nra. we're supposed to be so intimidated by their raw political power and the way they spend money in elections that we will not even talk about changing gun laws in this country if they don't want us to. all that nra spending with nothing to show for it was just this last election. since the election there has been newtown. and the way they have responded to newtown has been widely derided, even by the political right as just nuts, as ridiculous. "nra loon in bizarre rant over newtown." that was "the new york post," which is not to be confused with something like "mother jones." that's the right. wayne lapierre proposing more guns in school as a solution to gun violence.

saying guns are not the problem, hollywood is the problem. hollywood glorifying gun violence, that's the real problem, america. and at the same time that wayne lapierre was blaming hollywood glorifying gun violence for violence in this country, the national rifle association at its headquarters, at its national firearms museum was reupping its exhibit to show how much the nra loves hollywood guns. this is the kind of behavior that might pass muster for some sort of club that exists simply to comfort and entertain its own members in private. this is not the behavior of a political group that expects to be taken seriously in politics, expects to be seen as an important and influential actor on serious issues. i mean, your behavior, especially when all eyes are on you on your supposed area of expertise, it really can lead you outside the realm of relevance. you really can decide to put your lead character in a leather jacket and shorts on water skis jumping over a short. when you do that, you are amazing as spectacle, and you are one of the great american political cliches of the modern

era, but you are not to be taken seriously anymore when the adults are talking. and so the nra, which wants to be feared and respected, is not respected and should no longer be feared. at a time when the nation is talking about the issue of guns, the nra is a thing, but it's not the thing. the nra will have a seat tomorrow when vice president joe biden hosts another wide ranging meeting soliciting broad-based policy ideas about how to prevent the kind of mass violence that we saw at newtown last month. the nra is going to have a seat. but there is going to be a lot of other people who have seats too. today vice president biden and attorney general eric holder met with victims of gun violence and with anti-violence organizers. last night the house democratic congressman who has been charged by nancy pelosi with soliciting ideas and proposals for reform, congressman mike thompson, who himself is a wounded vietnam veteran and a gunowner and a hunter, mike thompson held a very well attended civil and

constructive town hall in his district in california. he is holding another town hall meeting tonight, and he is holding another one the day after that. today new york governor andrew cuomo in his state of the state address proposed several new gun-related reforms that he intends to pursue, including a ban on high capacity magazines. >> we are proposing today common sense measures. and i say to you forget the extremists. it's simple. no one hunts with an assault rifle. no one needs ten bullets to kill a deer. and too many innocent people have died already. end the madness now. pass safe, reasonable gun control in the state of new york. make this state safer. save lives, set them an example for the rest of the nation. let them look at new york and say this is what you can do, and this is what you should do. this is new york, a progressive

capital. you show them how we lead. >> you show them how we lead. new york's governor taking on the most supposedly intractable issue of our time, calling on new york state lawmakers to take that issue on themselves. forget the extremists, he says. now governor cuomo yesterday got a huge boost from prosecutors throughout new york state. and we think of new york state as being dominated by new york city. but new york state is a diverse state. and prosecutors from all over the state delivered to the governor a list of measures they support in terms of gun control. the list of prosecutors who signed that letter are overwhelmingly mostly republicans. and some of them, like franklin county district attorney derek champagne, which is definitely the best name in news today are themselves gun owners and gun enthusiasts. after signing that letter of support for common sense gun law reforms, derek champagne said

part of the reason that he and other gunowners feel comfortable with this list of new reforms that they have given to the governor is that they as gunowners grew up in new york state, which has gun restrictions that are already among the tough nest the country. and from that experience, they know that gun reforms are not the end of the world. quote, at the end of the day, i know that i can still hunt. i can still fish. i can still have my handgun. and under any of these proposals, my lawful right to carry firearms in new york state would not be impeded in any way. the only people saying that this cannot be done, that we cannot reform our gun laws are the nra and the people who believe what the nra has to say about itself. but they are not the only ones who get to speak to this issue anymore. now everybody gets a turn.

end the madness now. pass safe, reasonable gun control in the state of new york. make this state safer. save lives, set 'em an example for the rest of the nation. let them look at new york and say this is what you can do, and this is what you should do. this is new york, the progressive capital. you show them how we lead. >> governor andrew cuomo at the new york state of the state. congresswoman diana degette from colorado, her district borders aurora, colorado, which borders the mass shooting in a movie

theater. congresswoman, thank you very much for being with us. >> rachel, it's good to be with you. >> are you encouraged looking across the country by that andrew cuomo initiative spearheading it, but promising to work with his legislature to work with all tight gun laws? are you encouraged by that today? >> i'm encouraged by what governor cuomo is doing. i'm encouraged by my governor and my legislature which convened today and immediately started talking about stopping this terrible gun violence. i'm encouraged by the white house's initiative. i think finely, after aurora last summer and now the terrible tragedy at sandy hook, finally people are realizing that the american public, the moms and dads of this country have to speak up. and i've been working on gun

issues for 20 years. and i've never seen such a deep sense of outrage and a deep sense of commitment to doing something. >> that sense of outrage and that sense of commitment, does that also extend to your constituents and the coloradans that you talk to who are themselves gun owners, who may be hunters, may be sportsmen, people who see themselves as pro second amendment? >> oh, yes. you know, i'm a westerner. i come from a family of hunters. and we respect guns out here. we use them to hunt. but people who i've been talking to, they can't understand why you would need an assault rifle or why you need one of these assault magazines to go out hunting. i mean, a magazine that holds 30 or 100 rounds. you're not going to use that to shoot a deer. you're either going to use that for target practice or to shoot people. and frankly, the slight inconvenience to target hunters to have to reload that magazine is so slight that i think most americans agree, things like that need to be limited. >> in terms of the white house

initiative, which you said you are encouraged by, it was interesting today. vice president biden and attorney general eric holder today met with victims of gun violence and advocates for gun reform. we know they're meeting with gun rights groups, including the nra tomorrow. but in that sort of brief photo op before the meeting started, vice president biden talked about the president's commitment to do something, whether or not congress can get something passed. talking about taking the holistic approach that includes both legislation that they will try to push through congress, but also executive action by the white house and by the administration where that's possible. what is your reaction to that? >> i think it's great. i think after the 1994 assault weapons ban, a lot of people thought that -- there is the 1993 ban. and a lot of people thought that the democrats lost congress in 1994 because of that. i don't think that's completely true, but i do think it might have been partially true in some districts. what happened after that, i've been in congress since 1997, is despite the horrors that happened, columbine, which is

now in my district, aurora outside my district, virginia tech, on and on and on, a group of us have been working really hard, led by congresswoman carolyn mccarthy of new york to try to put some reasonable control on these weapons that only kill people. and we haven't been able to get people to work with us because they were afraid of the nra. now what you're seeing from the highest levels is a commitment to a holistic approach. and i just think that it's so far past time for that. i'm very encouraged by it. >> i feel like there has been a sea change in the politics, and people who are still talking about the nra being an absolute block toward anything even being considered are living in the past. that's how i read it. >> i will say -- i will say, rachel, i do think there are still members of congress who think that the nra is untouchable. but they're hearing from their constituents. 82% of americans think that some

of these things need to be controlled. and those 82% of americans need to call their members of congress, their house and senate members and tell them, even if they support second amendment rights and gun ownership, we don't need these assault rifles, and we don't need these assault magazines. >> congresswoman diana degette of colorado, thank you so much for your time. it's really nice to have you. >> thank you, rachel. you know my friend paul who founded afghan and iraq veterans of america, paul rykoff? it's big bald paul's birthday today, which means man, is he old, old, old, old, super old. also, paul has the same birthday as richard nixon. [ laughter ] we'll be right back.

map time. this is australia. the colors on this map represent temperature. the orangey and reddish tones are for temperatures from 104 degrees to 118 degrees fahrenheit. very hot. but forecasters are now predict weather for australia that is so hot that they have had to add new colors to the temperature scale. the super dark purple is for temperatures above 122 degrees fahrenheit, because that is what they now expect in the summer months in australia. those are the weather data. the fossil fuels data that are totally not at all connected to how we got to the point where we now need new colors on our temperature maps, the fossil fuel data, that is coming up.

i know the whole nation would like to join me now in saying happy birthday, tricky dick. born 100 years ago today, january 9th, 1913, our nation's

37th president, richard m. "tricky dick" nixon. president nixon of course is most remembered for resigning in disgrace, but he is also remembered for legendary paranoia. >> also, never forget the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. the establishment is the enemy. the professionals are the enemy. the professors are the enemy. write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it. >> write that on the blackboard 100 times! that is the kind of thing for which we have remembered richard nixon in the four decades since he became our nation's only sitting president to resign the office. but now today on what would have been nixon's 100 birthday from this comfortable distance, mr. nixon can also be remembered as a president who had a profoundly liberal record of legislative accomplishment. these were not necessarily nixon's own ideas. he was actually a conservative. so most of these things were democratic ideas from the congress. but governing went coming to

governing agreement with the congress, including with the democrats in congress. so when you look at the record of what nixon signed into law, it really is president nixon who we have to thank for the environmental protection agency and the national oceanic and atmospheric administration and osha and the consumer product safety commission and title ix and the cost of living adjustments to social security. those first three things on the list creating the epa, creating noaa, creating osha, that was all just in one year that was all in 1970. on the occasion of renewed interest in richard nixon for his 100th birthday, there is kind of an urban legend going on about him right now. this is supposed to show how his signature deteriorated over time. so in 1968, the year he was elected for the time his signature looks clear and straight forward, but over time it gets tougher to decipher until when he resigns it's barely recognizable as a signature at all, let alone his signature. it's kind of an amazing portrait, right? with this compelling visual to

go along with it. this, however, one of the stories that is ruined by careful fact checking. nixon resigned in '74, right? this is his letter resigning the presidency, dated august 9th, 1974. this is his last letter as president. it's pretty legible. the urban legend one and the resignation one from 1974 do not look at all alike. but maybe the resignation letter was an anomaly. maybe he spruced up the ledgeability on the resignation letter just because he knew it would be a famous document. well, the kind folks at the nixon library today spent some time helping us track this down. and that must have been a really busy day for them, right? but their archivist told us she was dubious of the nixon changing his signature story. she said she had never actually seen that sketchy flat line signature on any nixon

documents. so this was probably always richard north county's signature, even at the end, despite that amazing thing your friend posted on your facebook wall for nixon's 100th birthday. you want to know who really did change his signature in office? look at this. both of these signatures say the same thing. they both belong to treasury secretary tim geithner, who by virtue of being treasury secretary is also the guy who gets to sign our money. when mr. geithner became treasury secretary, he changed his signature. he changed it from the rather lovely loop de loops on the left to the fifth grader's cursive timothy f. geithner you see on the right. here he is explaining why. >> i think on the dollar bill i had to write something that people could read my name. i didn't try for elegance. i just tried for elegance. >> because mrs. quigley, the first grade writing teach worry have given me an "f" on that. >> i took third grade in new delhi, india. >> whether it is foreign penmanship instruction or something weirder, tim geithner's changed signature

never got nearly the attention that his successor's signature received. all of the media got fixated on a signature that is loopier than tim geithner's original signature. this is jack lew. all signs point to president obama say i knowing him to replace tim geithner. and if he is nominated and confirmed, that will mean that our money might end up looking like this. because that is jack lew's signature on it. if he doesn't choose to tune up the legibility of the loop de loops like tim geithner did, our money mite look like this. what "new york" magazine described as a slinky that has lost its spring, republicans in washington are hinting that we won't actually have to worry about seeing jack lew's wacky signature on our money. they're saying he doesn't have to worry about changing the signature to it looks good on

the money because he, jack lew, will never be the guy who has to actually sign the money. he will never be treasury secretary. politico.com today to be, quote, scoffing at the notion of jack lew as treasury secretary. mitch mcconnell is said to have been irked by mr. lew in the past. republican senator from nebraska, mike johanns called lew a controversial pick. the reasonable he is controversial is, quote, i think there are nick policies in this nation have been well received. and jack lew is in the middle of it. because democratic economic policies have not been well received by republicans in congress, and because jack lew once irked mitch mcconnell, he is, we're supposed to believe, not going to get the top tier cabinet position. we scoff in your general direction. if those do not sound like reasons substantive enough to block a presidential cabinet nomination, that is because those are not reasons

substantive enough to block a presidential cabinet nomination. at least historically speaking, those are not the kind of things that keep a person out of a top tier job like that. as "the new york times" calculated today, in the history of the u.s. senate, the senate has confirmed over 500 cabinet nominations. over 500. it has denied nine out of more than 500 in gnat senate history. the last time a cabinet nomination was denied was almost 25 years ago when the senate voted down poppy bush's nominee for defense john tower after what would later be described in his obituary of public allegations of womanizing and heavy drinking. so when republicans threaten to block susan rice, and now that they're threatening to block chuck hagel, and now that they are scoffing at even the prospect of jack lew at treasury, there are two options for understanding what republicans are doing here. they are either just making noise to convince their base that they still exist, and the beltway is dutifully reporting it as if it matters, but it doesn't. all those nominations are going to be or would have been fine, or the other option is that

republicans really are going to try to set an absolutely historically unprecedented bar against the president nominating his chosen cabinet in a way that has never happened before in u.s. history. they will block, say, a nominee for treasury secretary because mitch mcconnell once felt irked in his presence. if that is really what they are planning, keep in mind that the republicans' mandate for doing this is something that they think derives from an election that the president just won by a lot and which their party lost seats in both the house and the senate. so it's either total nonsense what they are saying about these nominees, or it is totally unprecedented. totally unprecedented behavior by a senate minority that has never done anything like this before. which one is it? joining us now is steve kornacki, host of "the cycle." steve, it's good to see you. empty threats? or are we in uncharted obstruction territory? >> i don't think it's uncharted yet. i'm curious to see how it plays out.

i think in terms of the republicans unifying in opposition, it's more likely in the case of hagel than lew, but we'll see how that plays out. i don't pick up yet in either case on the threat of what could kill either of these nominations that would be a filibuster there is a sense in hagel, even if he had all the republicans, all 45 of them say they are against him, there will be still be up or down. so maybe 55-45, maybe one democrat will peel off. the longer term threat here is this. what we've already experienced in the last four years is that the republicans in some very sort of troubling ways have changed the behavior enormous for congressional parties. you look at how they have treated the debt ceiling. they tried to claim that as a legitimate bargaining tool. you look what the senate republicans have down with the filibuster, taking extremes we have not seen before. if they do that to cabinet nominations, that could have troubling ramifications for the future. john tower, 1989. that's the last time we had a cabinet nomination not confirmed.

>> he wasn't filibustered. he was voted down. >> and before that 1959. it can happen under serious conditions it can happen. occasionally there be a john ash crochet, 58-42, some opposition, not enough to kill the nomination. generally, cabinet votes, the advice and consent, it's 93-3 vote in the end. if republicans now make these routine party line votes where the opposition party, it's the job of the opposition party to unite against just about anybody and 45 votes is sort of the new norm that republicans establish here for these, that won't stop any of obama's nominees. but think ahead to the next time a president is in power and does not have a senate majority. if the opposition party sees it as its duty to vote no, that's a huge problem. >> that's a huge problem and means that executive power will be radically redefined. >> right. >> in terms of jack lew and this idea that they're scoffing at

the prospect of even his nomination, of course he has not yet been formally nominated, i did spend some time today trying to figure out what it is that republicans don't like about him there is a list of criticisms of chuck hagel, loud criticisms they had about susan rice with her potentially going to state. i cannot figure it out with jack lew. do you have any sense of what their substantive beef with him is? >> besides the fact that he seems to have some association with this obama guy? >> been seen with him. >> right. that's half. i think what it is, the indications that i've seen are they see he is too good of a negotiator. they felt he was too shrewd of a negotiator. he was handling negotiations. he was in there in all the negotiations for the debt ceiling showdown in 2011. john boehner did not like him. >> john boehner said he had a hard time getting to yes. he couldn't persuade jack lew to tell him what he wanted. >> he knows the federal budget. he can do the calculations faster than anybody. i can just imagine what some of these sessions must have been like with him in there.

and when you removed him from the room, yeah, i imagine boehner felt he had a lot more latitude at that point. but of course anything that emerged from the room obama is going to run by him anyway. i think he really frustrated whether it was boehner or mcconnell, a lot of the republicans. so in that sense, if you're a democrat and you're wondering about this top of the, you're saying what is the biggest knock from obama? the biggest knock from lew from republican point is strong negotiator. >> can't have that. steve kornacki, co-host of msnbc's 3:00 show "the cycle," very helpful. we appreciate it. we'll be right back.

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it's kind of a remarkable photon front page of the "new york times" today. it is a photo of president obama in the oval office. he is the one sitting down with his back to the camera. the president meeting in this photo with his senior advisers late last month discussing the fiscal cliff negotiations. you can see treasury secretary tim geithner on the far left, jay carney in the middle holding a can of soda basically, this is the whole fiscal cliff negotiation gang. the caption of the photo says this, quote, the only woman facing the with the was, very closely, valerie jarrett. do you see valerie jarrett in the photo? she is right there in near jay carney. it's valerie jarrett's leg. her left leg is sticking out from behind the guy in the blue and white shirt standing next to jay carney. she appears to be wearing black tights maybe or leggings.

but funny as it is, the trickery is not why it became notorious today, and it's not why they put it on the front page of the "new york times." it's because out of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven senior staff members advising the president in this photo, only one of the people barely in this photo is a woman. last month president obama held a press conference to announce he is nominating senator john kerry to replace hillary clinton as secretary of state. so john kerry not susan rice. earlier this week, the president announcing that former republican senator chuck hagel was his pick to be the next secretary of defense. so chuck hagel and not, say, michelle flournoy, the very highly regarded undersecretary of defense for policy. no word yet on who president obama has in mind to be his next secretary of labor, but hilda solis announced just this afternoon that she has handed in her resignation.

that's another woman gone from the cabinet. the white house going out of its way to stress today right after the solis announcement exactly who in the cabinet plans to stay on at the start of the president's second term. they led their list with health secretary kathleen sebelius. earlier tried to press down on the lack of diversity in the cabinet. the u.s. ambassador to the united nations is susan rice. again, this president has made two appointments to the supreme court, both of them women. and i think that his commitment -- >> you think that it is an unfair charge? >> well, i think the record has spoken for itself. >> rosa brooks has written a book, she is a national security law professor at george washington university. >> in terms of the raw numbers, the obama administration is roughly equivalent to the clinton administration in terms of females being appointed, doing better than the bush

administration. >> i hold president obama to a high standard, i would like to think we could do a little bit better than the clinton administration, not just go back to the clinton administration, although, if i were about to go off the fiscal cliff, i would hide behind jay carney, too. >> you are not objective about this, apparently, having worked for michelle fourneau. were you surprised that she didn't get the nod? were you surprised that chuck hagel specifically did? >> i was surprised. i thought it was a fantastic opportunity for president obama to make an historic gesture and nominate the first female secretary of defense. it is one of those situations

where it struck me, obviously, i am completely biased. but it struck me that the most qualified person was a woman. chuck hagel is an impressive guy who i admire in a lot of ways. i don't know why he thinks that it takes a republican to be nominated two times out of three. >> michelle fourneau, her job as under-secretary was historically high level achievement, for somebody in the defense world. when she was there as such a highly regarded person as a potential next secretary of defense, did it make a difference in the pentagon? did it make a difference in that setting to have a woman at that high level? >> right. i think it absolutely did in several different ways, number one, she was just a real inspiration for a lot of young women and really encouraged them to go into jobs that were seen as being in male-dominated

realms, secondly, she really brought in a terrific crew of women into leadership positions in the pentagon. you know, dramatically increased the number of women in the positions. and when you think about the rolodex, you tend to think of people you know, and men tend to know more men, and women know more women, so getting people in that high-ranking pentagon post, it occurred to her in the way it may not have occurred to men, that i know kathryn hicks, or jenean davis. and then finally, michelle fourneau put a lot of effort into making the policy, the place a family-friendly work place, not just important to women but men, an important issue. to find flexible work arrangements, and even in the pentagon when you deal with

classified information a lot we now have technologies that do make that possible. and i think that having a leader that emphasized that from the top really did change the work place culture. >> is there a high-placed female that you think is reasonable to expect as the president continues to roll out his second term administration? >> i don't think we're likely to get one. i still think that the president obviously, he could ask michelle fourneau or susan rice to become the national security adviser. both of them would be fantastic in that job. likewise, you know, he -- depending on what happens with the position of director of national intelligence, if the current occupant stays or decides to go, that is another fantastic opportunity for a woman. and there are some women in the intelligence community. so i think it could be done if he wants to make it a priority. i hope it will, but i don't expect it. >> rosa brooks, nice to see you,

thank you for joining us. >> thanks, rachel. up next, we have an exclusive on something going on in alaska that has rather captured our imaginations around here. hold on, that is coming up. [ female announcer ] going to sleep may be easy, but when you wake up in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night when you can't get back to sleep. it's an effective sleep medicine you don't take before bedtime. take it in bed only when you need it and have at least four hours left for sleep. do not take intermezzo if you have had an allergic reaction to drugs containing zolpidem, such as ambien. allergic reactions such as shortness of breath or swelling of your tongue or throat

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last week was a short week for us, all three of those days we covered a strange story involving a big oil rig in alaska, specifically right here in alaska, a tiny island off the coast of the state, a number of endangered sea mammals, and as of last week, this threatened shell oil rig was threatening the entire region, when we last left, this rig full of 350,000 gallons of fuel, it was stuck alongside the rocks, a very

sensitive area. it has since been towed away to a nearby harbor where it is being investigated by a team of experts, including the coast guard. what happened when it got stuck in the first place, they were trying to move it. tow it from the area where it had been drilling from the aleutian islands, they ran into bad weather. the ship towing it lost the engines, lost the connection to the rig, the ship tried four more times to hook up to the rig. they were unable to establish a connection, they brought in another ship to help. but that had to be abandoned after the bad weather. the rig finally slammed into the nearby island, threatening everything around it. by why were they trying to tow the rig when they did? what was the rush? what shell says was they did it

then because the weather forecast looked so good. they say there was a two-week window where the weather was going to be good enough to tow it. turns out that does not appear to be the case. we have now obtained a letter, exclusively, sent to the president of shell, to ed markey, who will likely be the democratic nominee for john kerry's senate seat, for now, he is the top dog on energy issues. he writes "conversations with alaska at the national weather service don't back up shell's claims regarding the weather forecast. while shell cited a two-week good window of weather, the national marine forecast only extends for five days, not two weeks. shell's rig operations only happen for two weeks" shell has not appear to do consult at all, after november. if they had been in touch with the weather service, they would have learned what actually was forecasted winds reaching 25 knots and seas reaching five feet.

shell says they only moved this rig because of a two-week window of good weather. but the national weather service doesn't even give two weeks for weather, and what they did was the horribly bad weather -- what explains their rush to move that rig when they did? well, in this letter, congressman markey raises another potentially explosive issue. quoting "it does appear that they could be at risk. shell could have potentially been expose to do state tax liability on the rig in excess of $6 million." so you got that? if shell did not get their rig across state border by january one, they would have been on the hook for 6 million bucks in state taxes. january first, when they needed to get the rig out of alaska,